HP claims to 'throttle' viruses

HP today unveiled newly developed software which it claims can quickly control the spread of viruses across corporate networks, and reduce the damage caused during an attack.

Dubbed HP Virus Throttle, the software is designed to fight increasingly malicious worms and viruses by helping businesses detect, contain and slow the rate at which an attack spreads inside the core of the IT infrastructure.

HP claimed that the software takes a non-traditional approach to virus protection. Traditional virus scanning products often rely on existing virus signatures provided by third parties, whereas Virus Throttle detects abnormal, virus-like behaviour by monitoring network connection requests and identifying abnormal activity typically exhibited by a worm or virus attempting to propagate within a network.

It is designed to run without interference to normal system or networking operation, and only affects the viral process while all normal traffic continues unimpeded.

Once a worm or virus is detected, the software inhibits it from making network connections and thus chokes its ability to propagate. It then flags the presence of the worm or virus to the system administrator, who can take appropriate action to remove it from the system.

Originally developed in HP Labs, the software is available for HP ProLiant servers in a special pack and for ProCurve Networking by HP 5300 switches.

HP also demonstrated a product dubbed Security Containment suite, which helps applications compromised by an attack to deter unauthorised access to other applications or files. Security Containment is available only for users of the HP-UX 11i v2 Unix operating system.

"If IT systems were 'intelligent' enough to automatically detect and shut down attacks before they spread, administrators would spend less time and money trying to catch up," said Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer at HP Security Office and HP Services.